Finding a directory in a Linux Terminal

How can I find a particular directory in a terminal window in Linux? I think it involves using grep, but I'm not sure how.

stanigator

Posted 2010-07-02T05:37:00.053

Reputation: 1 319

removing find-in-files tag since you are locating a directory, no file-content-search is implied. – nik – 2010-07-02T05:44:32.297

What do you know about the directory that would allow you to find it? – David Z – 2010-07-02T05:58:48.350

1you have to provide at least some search criteria, "particular" is a bit vague. one can find items on the disc based upon names, relation ships, sizes, content, etc etc. – akira – 2010-07-02T07:16:38.060

Answers

Would you be looking for something like this?

find . -type d | grep DIRNAME

nik

Posted 2010-07-02T05:37:00.053

Reputation: 50 788

whats the difference? – Dobler – 2015-05-22T05:13:21.567

Five years later I did notice the answer in the comment was slower to process than the original answer. Maybe a glitch. Anyone? Bueller? – aCodeSmith – 2015-06-17T03:45:05.810

21what's wrong with find . -name DIRNAME -type d? – Benjamin Bannier – 2010-07-02T05:47:50.027

4@honk, Nothing :-) -- the OP seems to like grep; and we all like variety – nik – 2010-07-02T05:51:15.200

If you want to find a particular directory that might be anywhere on your computer, the following will work, but it might take a while.

find / -name DIRNAME -type d

garyjohn

Posted 2010-07-02T05:37:00.053

Reputation: 29 085

5And, if you want to find within the working directory -- replace '/' with '.' -- could get quicker. – nik – 2010-07-02T05:52:38.597

If you have it installed, locate is designed for this. Google "man locate"

TREE

Posted 2010-07-02T05:37:00.053

Reputation: 1 147

Though locate won't provide you real-time results, but instead returns the results it gathered while updatedb was last run. If the filesystem doesn't change much, then it isn't a real problem and locate is very fast. – Janne Pikkarainen – 2010-07-29T11:12:07.240

-1 Locate is designed to find files, not directories. Or is there an option I am not aware of? – Martin R. – 2017-07-13T16:26:17.550

locate works just fine for directories. – TREE – 2017-07-13T19:10:37.157